User Reviews (27)

Phoenix shines in an inspired and original film that leaves you wanting more

Warning: Spoilers

Saw the film yesterday at the Athens International Film Festival, with Lynne Ramsay in attendance.

With its strong experimental elements, at some point this film comes really close to being a masterpiece, and it's undoubtedly the definition of narrative economy. For what its worth, the abrupt ending left me wanting more, although a circle had obviously been closed (still, there was plenty of more to see in the character, now that he was... "really here" and actually conscious).

Phoenix is absolutely brilliant as the disillusioned protagonist who is tormented by his past, and now hits back at the cruel and violent world that haunted him. He should get an Oscar nomination at the very least.

"You Were Never Really Here" is a great mix of reality and delusion, driven by the central character's recurring past traumatic experiences. Perpetuation of violence in a cynical world is the main theme, and it's depicted in a very inspired and original way thanks to the top notch direction and spectacular photography (some stylish scenes are able to convey powerful feelings and messages in a far more effective way than a conventional narration would ever do).

When the tension escalates, this slow-burn psychological/revenge thriller will keep you on the edge of your seat; the skillful use of editing and music really help on that aspect.

Ramsay was fun, down to earth and answered many questions afterwards.

24 out of 30 found this helpful.

cucckombo23 October 2017

10/10

Clearly the Best Film of 2017 (for me)

Warning: Spoilers

You Were Never Really Here is an artistic, brutal and violent revenge film, but it isn't for everyone.

Lynne Ramsay's direction is frenetic, the dark atmosphere and the tension that fills the whole film makes an incredible and unique masterpiece. Jonny Greenwood's soundtrack is also very intensive. It is a really naturalistic film, we can see everything from Phoenix's revenge with a hammer. There are cruel scenes with blood, and bone breaking. Every scene was filmed beautifully, so the cinematographer's work is also wonderful. And Joaquin Phoenix's performance is also incredible.

I recommend this film if you like the bloody and naturalistic revenge, and the artistic violence in films (for example: The Revenant, No Country for Old Men or A Clockwork Orange or the Drive!).

20 out of 25 found this helpful.

antoniotierno26 November 2017

7/10

Extremely violent but effective

Warning: Spoilers

A kind of 21st century riff on "Taxi Driver" that turns, by the end, into a sort of remake of "Logan" — and an odyssey across New York hellscape combining formal elegance, humor, but also unsparing violence."You Were Never Really Here" is only her 4th movie in the 18 years since her brilliant, Cannes-premiered debut feature, "Ratcatcher." Her return seals her standing as one of our most fearless and forceful filmmakers, if not one as prolific as she deserves to be.

11 out of 13 found this helpful.

FrostyChud29 November 2017

7/10

Not what it appears

Warning: Spoilers

If you thought this was a film about a disturbed loner avenging an innocent, you got snookered.

The only way to understand YWNRH is through a Freudian lens.

The theme of this film is not father-daughter incest as it appears, but rather mother-son incest.

Joe has an incestuous relationship with his mother. "Stay with me a little longer," she says when he puts her to bed. In the next scene, she is trying to cajole him into coming into the bathroom where she is naked. The multiple references to PSYCHO are not a coincidence: this too is the story of a man transformed into a serial murderer by his obscene mother.

The story proper is nothing is a paranoid delusion: hence the title of the film and the mysterious "invisibility" of the main character.

The true story: Joe, as a child, is dragged into an incestuous relationship by his mother. His father, whose job ought to be to prevent this regressive fusion, does not have the authority to separate them. He is too violent, too weak, or too absent: we never find out. All we ever see of him is a hand holding a hammer. This scene must be understood as a metaphor. Father discovers their relationship and explodes; as he rages impotently with his hammer, mother and son exchange a complicit glance under the bed. Translation of the mother's wink: "He's impotent. You're still MINE." On mother's credenza is a photo of her as a young and beautiful woman and a photo of her son. Father has been eliminated from the picture.

Joe rescues abused girls. This is a fantasy. No abused girl ever existed, only an abused boy. Joe invents the story of a girl abused by her father as a displacement of the true abuse: a boy by his mother.

What actually happens in the movie, and what is fantasy? What actually happens is very simple. Joe murders his mother. Joe commits suicide. Perhaps the homosexual encounter in the sauna and the drugs are true. Everything else is a delusion that he creates to escape from the horror of the truth. In Joe's fantasy, he is a powerful man and not a victim. He has a benevolent father figure (McCleary). He makes ample use of the hammer which appears to be the only trace of a paternal legacy. The Nina character is how Joe sees his mother: as a beautiful, innocent, prohibited object of desire. Joe's delusion is simultaneously an attempt to understand the truth and an attempt to flee the truth. David Lynch uses this technique more explicitly in LOST HIGHWAY, MULHOLLAND DRIVE, and TWIN PEAKS. It is very effective on film and Lynne Ramsay is right to exploit it. In Joe's delusion, the father (represented by the two- dimensional Votto and Williams characters) takes "illegal" possession of his daughter. In reality, this is how the young Joe perceives his father's possession of his mother: as an unbearable crime that must be punished. Did Joe murder his own father? It is possible. Note that in all of Joe's traumatic flashbacks, women are being murdered, not men. These flashbacks are not real. They are irruptions of Joe's deepest fantasy: murder his mother. He never went to Iraq.

One day, like Ed Kemper, Joe finally kills his mother. He is the one who shot her in the head. To exculpate himself, he flees into an unbelievable political conspiracy fantasy in which all symbolic fathers are pedophile criminals. Why is Joe so protective of his mother's privacy? Because he doesn't want anyone to find out what is going on between them.

I wasn't sure the director understood her own story until the moment she replaced Joe's sinking mother with Nina. Here she could not be clearer: Nina is just a fantasy screen for Mother.

In reality, Joe really does shoot himself in the diner. The fantasy of a happy future with Nina is just a screen.

I have read Jonathan Ames before and the theme of maternal incest is often implied (his fascination for transsexuals is further proof of an Oedipal thematic).

Good movie.

21 out of 28 found this helpful.

The Movie Diorama10 March 2018

10/10

You Were Never Really Here, simply put, is a stunning piece of cinema.

Warning: this review will excessively use the adjective "phenomenal". Phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. Phenomenally directed, acted and written. This phenomenal indie thriller will leave you breathless. An incredibly rare achievement to leave me hypnotised long after the credits roll, but Lynne Ramsay's latest intrusive yet intimate character study did that and then some. Centralising on Joe, a war veteran suffering from PTSD, who accepts a job to retrieve a politician's kidnapped daughter from a brothel. However in doing so, he risks the safety of his mother and his own life. This showcases Ramsay's supremely defiant directing style. Every scene, every camera movement and every little detail is a finely tuned mechanism to a large machine. The entire picture exudes confidence, such bold directing choices that elevates this above other indie titles. The visceral violence and bleak events that occur create several thrilling moments, but the palpable tension is illustrated through the character of Joe. A damaged man addicted to pain killers to deal with his hallucinogenic illusions that tamper with his sanity. Ramsay's screenplay never belittles him into an unlikeable state, the behests he accepts actually retains his humanity whilst portraying the excessive violence. All phenomenally played by Joaquin Phoenix who many consider to be one of the best actors working today. With this, I completely agree. Dialogue is kept to a minimum yet the amount of expression just from his face and body language was phenomenal. Jonny Greenwood's unsettling and intrusive score only adds to the heightened state of mind that the narrative conveys. Just utterly enthralling. My eyes never left the screen once. The ambiguous ending was the icing on the cake, solidifying its indie origins. Beautiful and horrific simultaneously. A perfect juxtaposition that illustrates the themes and technical talent conveyed through this phenomenal film. It gets the second perfect rating of the year. Cannot recommend this enough.

8 out of 9 found this helpful.

Ruben Mooijman17 October 2017

6/10

Taxi Driver revisited

It's hard to review this film without mentioning 'Taxi Driver'. Both films are about disillusioned war veterans, moving through the urban jungle, loathing the decadence of modern society, and rescuing a young girl from a brothel. Also, both films feature an aspiring politician during an election campaign. It's simply impossible to ignore so many similarities. But it's extremely difficult, not to say impossible, to make a film that can stand up to the iconic Scorsese classic.

Joe, a silent war veteran played by Joaquin Phoenix, specializes in difficult operations like rescuing young girls who have run into trouble. So he doesn't hesitate when an influential politician asks him to search for his daughter. The man doesn't want to involve the police, because he fears for his reputation.

Finding the girl turns out to be remarkably simple. But after having saved her by violently eliminating everyone standing in the way, things go wrong. There is more violence, more blood and more killing. In the end, Joe seems to emerge victoriously, but there is nothing to be happy about. 'Where do you want to go?', he asks the saved girl. 'I don't know', she says. 'I don't know either', is the desperate sounding answer.

Lynn Ramsay explains Joe's state of mind by inserting lots of short flashes, sometimes almost subliminal. It adds to the general mood of darkness and looming danger. All kinds of unpleasant things are going on, but Joe nor the viewer know exactly what. The only way to deal with it, is with ruthless violence.

But is this one man rescue mission enough to carry a whole film? I have my doubts. The first time Joe rescues the girl, the action is filmed in a very original way. We see everything happening through the images of the surveillance cameras in the building. This is exciting cinema. But at the end, Joe is filmed in a conventional way while slowly moving through a large villa, suspecting danger around every corner. This is a scene like so many similar scenes from other movies.

After leaving the cinema, I felt I had seen a bit too much violence and too little storytelling. But without doubt, this is a personal feeling: perhaps the lack of story elements is what makes this film stand out from others.

22 out of 33 found this helpful.

Sameir Ali27 December 2017

9/10

Modern Version of Taxi Driver and More...!!

December 12
Gala Screening, Dubai International Film Festival 2017.

I have a confession to make. I haven't seen any of the films of Lynne Ramsay. But, I was really impressed with this movie. Very lucky to watch it long before it's theatrical release.

Joe is living with his old mother. He had a very difficult past. He is living with it's hangover. He gets an assignment to rescue a girl who was kidnapped. That's it. No more about the story. That's something you should really discover yourself. I just want to say that, this film will hold you to the seat even after the end of the film, to think.

Hats off to the Director for making such an intense film. Joaquin Phoenix, as ever, nailed the role. He won Best Actor Awards at the Cannes Film Festival.

Since its premiere at Cannes, I was looking forward for Lynne Ramsey's new film, which premiered in my country just yesterday and the wait was totally worth it. You Were Never Really Here is based on a novel written by Jonathan Ames and it follows Joe, a disturbed man, suffering of PTSD, played by Joaquin Phoenix in what's arguably the best performance of his career, as he is hired to find missing people.

The plot concerns his attempts to save a young girl, the daughter of a local politician who is involved in a child sex-trafficking business. His haunted mind, he starts having memories about his childhood, war, and failing to save a large group of young Chinese girls who were killed during an FBI raid.

The film has a Taxi Driver combined with Drive feeling but is a great film in its own right. It's probably one of the best character studies we had in years. I really hope this film will get some recognition during the next award season. The screenplay was amazing, the score from Jonny Greenwood perfectly fit this film, boosting its intensity and Phoenix's performance was impeccable.

4 out of 5 found this helpful.

lasttimeisaw12 November 2017

8/10

You were never really here and I've never been to me, either!

Fourth feature from the button-pushing Lynne Ramsay, YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE pits Joaquin Phoenix's emotionally blocked veteran Joe against a sordid child prostitution ring, meanwhile he is also seeking an outlet from the besetting trauma of his checkered past.

It is a gut-wrenching story on paper, but Ramsay configures sundry conceits to present a "reductive" diorama of the events, and the most prominent one is the viewpoint, which never deflects from Joe, hence signifies that there will be no lengthy flashback sequences to inform us what he has experienced (as a child, a soldier, etc.), only through the transient fragments of memory incessantly penetrating into Joe's heads, audience can piece it together proximately, but never the full picture, because for once, we don't need to know it, what is at stake here is its traumatic after effect.

Secondly, Lamsay flags up a bloated/beefed-up Phoenix's body metamorphosis, which brings about the corporeal testimony of what he has been suffering from, transferred through Ramsay's hyper-real observation (scars, bruise, etc.). Joe's knee-jerking coping mechanism towards the bane is self-suffocation, a leitmotif repeatedly wielded to induce our own gasping response, resounds hauntingly with the self-initiated count-down of Nina (Samsonov), the girl whom Joe is hellbent on rescuing from her pedophiliac abusers. Phoenix won BEST ACTOR is Cannes (along with Ramsay's script win), deservedly, his performance is arrestingly measured, profoundly unaffected but deeply affecting, because he invites us to care for Joe, a laconic, middle-aged, mom's boy, a damaged good whose weapon of choice is a hammer, he makes good as a brutal enforcer, using violence to repress his disturbed state, which is caused by violence/abuse itself, it is a vicious circle he cannot outrun, and we can pour out our sympathy to him when a bereft Joe decides to end his life in the lake (with the sublimely beauteous underwater stillness) before thinks better of it or near the denouement, a startled figment of his imagination prompts a perversely comical/shocking combo.

Last but not the least, it is about how Ramsay choose to present its action of brutality, and she ingeniously points up its "aftermath" instead of showing the actual execution (during his first rescuing attempt inside a high-end New York apartment building, Joe's action is entirely captured by the fuzzy security camera), violence itself is ephemeral, what lingers behind is its aftermath, tangible, grisly and immutable. When Joe finally loses it after seeing what Nina has done (a big letdown to fans of Alessandro Nivola though), it is a scathing brickbat towards the state of affairs without the help of conventional verbosity, and inaugurates Joe's mental ablutions of his own existence.

In the event, Ramsay's clean-cut, existential thriller owns to a lucid consciousness of its sensitive material, brilliant aptitude in its visual and sound literacy, also the film allows humor (a sprightly Judith Roberts as Joe's dotage-afflicted mother, sharing meta-PSYCHO joke in communion), and psychic vision (that moment when Joe realizes who is the culprit in his mind-scape) into the play, the main takeaway for me is the unexpected tendresse between Joe and a hit-man he has mortally injured (Price), lying together on the floor, humming along Charlene's '80s one-hit-wonder I'VE NEVER BEEN TO ME on the radio, and holding their hands, is the song really the answer to the film's English title? You were never really here and I've never been to me, either. Touché!

17 out of 33 found this helpful.

unyan12 March 2018

10/10

This is why we go to the movies

Quality cinema is hard to find. You can usually sniff it from the opening titles and in this instance that is very true. Exceptional writing, acting and art direction all combine to deliver a feast for the senses and take you on an absorbing emotional ride which sticks with you long after. The film has been compared to Taxi driver but it put me in mind of (the original) Get Carter. Phoenix's performance holds the same gravity as that of Caine and the narrative is similar. There were moments of pure Tarantino style brilliance - (I've Been to paradise) and the choice soundtrack was obviously carefully thought about. Highly recommend if you can deal with the violence.

4 out of 6 found this helpful.

Pjtaylor-96-13804411 March 2018

8/10

Dark, intense and immensely gripping; as discreet as it is devastating.

'You Were Never Really Here (2018)' is a dark, disturbing but discreet piece, one that's as off-kilter and uncomfortable as it is subdued. It's this remarkable restraint that allows its undercurrent of explosive violence, seedy deviance and childhood traumas to be all the more shocking and genuinely effecting when they erupt from the relative calm on the screen. It's an amazingly atmospheric and difficult watch that doesn't hold your hand, so that if you aren't always fully engaged then you may not wholly grasp the almost exposition-less plot. The explicit, brutally jarring flashes of a past narrative paint a picture of an incredibly wholistic implicit story, without filling in every blank, in an incredibly gripping way, leaving you to wallow in the head of a severely damaged individual and think about the experience for long after the credits have rolled. 8/10

4 out of 7 found this helpful.

brankovranjkovic15 March 2018

9/10

You were never really here: Art-house, violent, action, thriller with a beating soundtrack

Film4 / BFI collaboration

This is an art-house, violent, action, thriller with a beating soundtrack.

Adapted from Jonathan Ames's novel of a broken and tormented ex-military vigilante played by Joaquin Phoenix, hired to rescue a girl from a sex ring.

Gripping and dark, this is a different kind of action film. To begin with Phoenix's character resembles an icy Liam Neeson 'Taken' character, but slowly we see flashbacks that imply he had an abused childhood, the character and story skilfully develop to only ever be implied. But not only brutal violence, Phoenix also shows some emotional, tender moments when highlighting scenes involving his mother.

I like dialogue heavy films, but Phoenix gives an intense performance of a character with very little to say. However, his actions and expressions speak volumes.

Going to do some shopping for Easter in Birmingham,I decided to take a look at what was screening at the oldest cinema in the UK (The Electric.) Previously hearing about her from the infamous walk-off on the interesting Western Jane Got A Gun,I was intrigued to find writer/director Lynne Ramsay's new title being screened,which led to me finding out if you were really here.

Caked in a scraggy beard, Joaquin Phoenix gives an excellent performance as Joe,whose Noir loner outlook is fuelled by Phoenix giving Joe a dead to the world gaze,which strikes with each hammer blow he gives to the scum of the earth. Finding an empathetic connection with Nina, (played by a very good Ekaterina Samsonov) Phoenix allows Joe to express care for Nina,whilst always remaining aware of the tar-pit they are trapped in. Taking the wheel from Jonathan Ames's novel,the screenplay by Ramsay aims to examine the psychological side of Joe,but misses the mark with consistent "borrowing" from Taxi Driver. Suggesting that Joe is a damaged war vet,Ramsay is unable to avoid drawing from Taxi Driver's child prostitute,pimps,loners and corrupt politicians in the most empty manner possible,with Ramsay failing to give any additional depth to the themes explored in Taxi. Weaving flashbacks to Joe's abusive childhood, Ramsay's attempt to give Joe a psychological depth disappointingly fails to fully alight, due to Joe's fight to protect Nina not becoming fully thread with his own past,which was never really here...

1 out of 1 found this helpful.

Roku daime9 March 2018

Boring

Very boring movie. There's barely anything happening, and it moves at a snail's pace. More importantly though, there is no mystery, and no suspense, the two key things you need in a mystery-thriller, if you're even going to be able to call it that. There's very little dialogue as well.

There is no action either, and I don't know what some people are talking about when they say it is violent, you don't get to see any graphic violence what so ever, since in the only few cases where someone has suffered brutal violence, they are already dead. You don't actually see it happen. In other cases, some violence is shown, but they don't show any of the effects, or it is shown off-screen, or even through an in-movie surveillance camera...There is one short struggle between two people, and one instance of one guy shooting two people (which is shown off-screen, though the effetcs are shown afterwards), and one instance of one guy headbutting another guy. That's it. Everything else is, like I said, either off-screen, seen through a surveillance camera, or it's just an instance of coming across someone who has already been killed.

With no suspense, no mystery, virtually no action, very little dialogue, and a very slow pace, this becomes very boring very quickly...There is a little bit of drama at least, but I can't fathom why this movie is rated so highly...Must be because of the topic and morals that are being looked at in the movie I guess...I guess movie critics don't want to be entertained when watching a movie, they just want a movie that has a message or a resolution they like, not caring how the movie gets there, or what happens along the way...

I'm not sure what rating to give this movie, so I'm not going to give it one. All I know is this movie was incredibly dull for me. I feel like the time I spent watching it was a real waste...

5 out of 13 found this helpful.

cool hand steve17 March 2018

7/10

Hypnotic but forgettable

A very, very good film; unsettling, dark, provocative, great acting and cinematography. But would I watch it again? I'm not sure I would and that prevents it from being a great film in my eyes.

Herein lies the problem: this film didn't leave a lasting impression on me, there were no real lingering emotions. Understandably it's been compared to Taxi Driver but I didn't feel this film had the same raw, explosive energy and intensity. It's just a very accomplished and stylish film. There's nothing wrong with that, that in itself makes it a film worth seeing, but often critics applaud style over substance, so I'm not sure it's fully deserving of all the praise it's been receiving.

There's no doubt that Lynne Ramsay has done a superb job and there were several scenes I loved for their cleverness, detail and originality. Phoenix is astonishing and squeezes out every last dust particle of Joe's shattered being. I've heard Ramsay say she saw Joe as someone with a head full of broken glass, and that's certainly conveyed in the film. But I felt there was a bit too much inner turmoil. It felt a little bit too drawn out for me. It could've done with more changes in tempo and a greater range of emotions. There was dark humour but it was all a bit too glum. Yes, I get the film deals with very dark subject matter but I want films to put me through the ringer, play with my expectations, take me on a roller coaster ride. Although this had lots of emotional depth to it, it was one-note. The last scene didn't alter that for me.

You Were Never Really Here will be loved by cinephiles and there's a lot to admire about it so it's definitely worth watching, but ultimately, it falls short of a masterpiece, as some have proclaimed it. I liked it whilst I watched it, but after exiting the cinema, it felt like I'd never really been there either. 7.5/10.

0 out of 0 found this helpful.

gcarpiceci-732689 November 2017

2/10

Irritating piece of self indulgent cinema

When I read on the posters « The Taxi Driver Of The XXI Century » I put it immediately on my watch-list; well, after seeing the movie, the comparison is almost blasphemy. Despite the strong performance delivered by Phoenix and the good cinematography, the movie is a total downer. Instead of a plot, what you have is a series of disjointed fragments which you try desperately to make sense of, but the task is hopeless. To add to it, as if it were needed, the director injects more fragments of flashbacks which hardly relate to anything happening in the present. Maybe I just grossly missed the whole thing, but I found this an irritating piece of self- indulgent cinema.

17 out of 83 found this helpful.

bdewiyah13 March 2018

1/10

couldn't rate it as a 0

Waste of money and time.. what was the plot about !!! the movie was mostly like flexing the acting mucsle of Phoenix!! ok guys we know that he can act and that he is good at it, so plz give him a proper plot !!!!

3 out of 9 found this helpful.

pdouglas8110 March 2018

2/10

Tried so hard but failed

What a shame. Quite stylish. Great camera shots. But that alone does not make a good film. It's boring and frustrating. So much effort was put into trying to make it look stylish but it was boring, slow and lacking in story and dialogue.

Throughout the film the emphasis is on style and cinematography and a lot of the shots are quite impressive but it's not clever or captivating. It's boring.

3 out of 9 found this helpful.

stephjfoster20 October 2017

1/10

Don't bother - disjointed story line, weak protagonist, how did this get funded?!

This movie should never have been made and wasting the funds of Film 4 and BFI which could be used to make better films in its place. I wish I had never bothered wasting my time or money on a ticket to see this film as I will never get those minutes of my life back.

The back story to the protagonist (Pheonix) was very weak and not all of the flash backs to his past were relevant or made any sense as to why the character was that way or as to what he was doing. The story line for the movie is pretty much non existence. It is near impossible to understand why 2 key actions were done by the characters candidate and his daughter and the flow of the movie is missing large chunks of story line and there isn't even the ability to make a leap of faith in trying to connect the story for something to click later in the movie - it makes no sense, if someone can explain all the things then I am open to listening.

On a side note to the director - I attended this at London Film Festival and if you are too shy to talk to the BFI staff on stage to introduce the film and fail to return to a promised Q&A then don't bother showing up and walking off before answering any questions.

21 out of 117 found this helpful.

tambrose-998988 November 2017

2/10

A truly awful film

Shockingly awful self indulgent film. Takes pointless graphic violence to new heights. Incoherent story line too. Do not waste 90 minutes of your life. It will make you feel angry, stressed and physically sick. The cinematography and sound are undeniably good, but that doesn't justify a pornographic organisation of violence.

16 out of 90 found this helpful.

counciltours26 January 2018

3/10

It's clobberin' time .......

Warning: Spoilers

Joaquin Phoenix obviously jumped at a role which had little dialogue to learn , had him onscreen for almost the total running time and required only that he glower and bash bad guys over the heard with a ball pein hammer. Over-reliance on flash-backs to flesh out his character and lapses in logic make for a film which seemed to stretch way beyoind it's reputed 85 minutes playing time.
One point each for interesting soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood , some pretty cinematography and a brief appearance by the always excellent John Doman.
The ending was a complete artistic cop-out. Director seemed to have been unclear as to whether to go for tragedy or redemption and went for the hoary old .."ah that was only a dream" scene.

4 out of 17 found this helpful.

sierra-nevada12 March 2018

Waste of time

Don't waste your time on this moronic tripe.

This film had potential yet threw it away. It feels like a poor imitation of a Yorgos Lanthimos film, anything that pleases the critics hey.
Its only saved from 1 star due to the fact that it is visually pleasing to watch and has a decent score to go with it.

2 out of 7 found this helpful.

dokrauss2 March 2018

5/10

This was never really a movie...

...at least, one that had a point. I think it was a way for Joaquin Phoenix to show how much of a badass he is, and he is. But badassery usually needs a reason to believe and this is aimless. Best I can figure out, Phoenix plays badass Joe, who might be a badass because of Aaarmy training, sir, not really sure, who is trying to overcome a traumatic childhood by rescuing kids from their own traumatic childhoods in a way guaranteed to traumatize the children he's rescuing. There's some baffling political shenanigans going on, too. S'kay, because you get to watch badassery. I'd watch it again just for that.

4 out of 20 found this helpful.

hugokeijzer26 January 2018

3/10

A desperate attempt at being cool

A desperate attempt at being cool that can't hide its underdeveloped storyline. Don't underestimate your audience. Silent scenes, jarring cuts and on-the-nose visual references may be found in a lot of great films, but it's not what makes them great.

4 out of 23 found this helpful.

guylyonsntlworldcom16 March 2018

4/10

Sorry the taxi driver claim is a fraud !!!!

This film is an over hyped mess, and any references to the 1970's classic taxi driver, are false.
I felt cheated by the poster's claim in the cinema, as it is best described as a blatant lie.
The story here is a muddle, and as the story unfolds, the viewer risks losing interest. I found myself falling asleep during the film, and struggled to understand what on earth was going on.
Phoenix was excellent , but a good performance by an actor won't save a film!
Enough said !!!!!!!!